'SWEAR 2T fHE HORN9

Crows or Gros Ventres, we youngsters would
leave our camp early In the morning, taking along
with us a large bag of pemmican for our lunch
and our bows and arrows, and go to this spot to
'fight'. We would divide ourselves Into two
tribes, and we would look up the old landmarks
we had heard our fathers talk about, and station
ourselves In the exact positions from which the
original battle was fought. Lucky were the boys
who were chosen to be the chiefs and medicine-
men.

When the 'chiefs5 had got their warriors lined
up in their positions, they would hold separate
councils of war, to go over their line of attack.
Then we would all strip ourselves as our fathers
did when they fought, and paint our bodies the
colour of the local landscape so that we could not
be easily seen by the 'enemy'. And when the
signal was given we would start our battle.

We had little arrows, made by our mothers,
with blunt, round balls on their striking ends, and
whenever a fellow was hit by one of these he was
'dead';, and had to fall in his tracks and lie there.
Our mothers had also tied locks of black horse-
hair in our hair so that we could be 'scalped' when
'killed'.

When we were at our war games we did not
rush at one another blindly as I have seen little
white boys do. We took the battle very seriously^

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